


The Impossible

by brevityis



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Challenge Response, M/M, Star Trek: Into Darkness Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-09
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-18 04:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/875505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brevityis/pseuds/brevityis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what it takes to do the impossible.</p><p>Written for the prompt:<br/>"Bones-the-doctor ALWAYS saves Jim. Period. This is canon, fanon, and trope. Khan blood is a miracle, and everything is pretty happyshiny at the end of STID, but we didn't get to see the intervening weeks when Bones worked feverishly, jacking himself up on stimulants to keep working on the cure, or when it looked like Jim might die anyhow despite the massive compromise of medical ethics, or when an exhausted and terrified Bones finally let fly on the command crew for not calling him down to engineering in the first place, goading Spock into a meld to share the moment of Jim's death. And how much of this will Lazarus-Jim ultimately find out? How does this change not only the Jim/Bones dynamic, but the way everyone looks at Bones?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title and the lyrics at the start of the work come from the song "The Impossible" by Joe Nichols. [ Youtube link here. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce-pUKsJM6w)
> 
> Special thanks to my wonderful friend Jillian for the heavy lifting in-depth beta work, without whom there would be more errors than I knew what to do with, and to my other wonderful friend britesecondstar for being a second beta, cheerleader, and bouncing bad titles back and forth until we found a good one. These two ladies have been key in getting things done.
> 
> ___

_Unsinkable ships sink._  
 _Unbreakable walls break._  
 _Sometimes the things you think would never happen,_  
 _Happen just like that._  
 _Unbendable steel bends._  
 _If the fury of the wind is unstoppable,_  
 _I've learned to never underestimate,_  
 _The impossible._

Out on a ship in space, living a life of derring-do, Leonard thought he’d accepted that Jim would most likely die before him. Accepting the possibility was one thing, but accepting it overall was relative. Accepting the possibility meant that it might happen someday, but that every time Jim ended up on his table was a fight to prevent “someday” from becoming “today.” Accepting it overall… Leonard hadn’t been able to do that. Every time Jim got hurt he came to McCoy to be healed, saved from the brink, and dammit, that was what Leonard did.

It was completely different when Jim had already gone so far past the brink that he was cold and still on McCoy’s table. In a bag, of all fucking things.

No, Leonard hadn’t been able to accept that. In that moment his world had stopped spinning, only to be started again by a fucking glorious no-longer-so-dead tribble.

* * *

For the past three days, the only thing on McCoy’s mind had been adapting the regenerative properties of Khan’s blood into something that would work with Jim’s system. A tribble was one thing, with a very simple system and a high metabolism that could take Khan’s blood and run with it in only a couple of hours. Tribbles didn’t have to worry about brain damage or loss of motor function the way a human patient did.

“Doctor, when was the last time you slept? Or ate, for that matter?” The concerned voice was familiar, but he waved it off without looking up from the molecular pattern laid out on his screen, the list of possible methods for deriving something functional to a human patient. That was until someone’s hand swiped through his field of vision, stealing away his work.

“I don’t know what kinda hell you sprung from, but ‘round here we don’t go stealin’ other people’s work!” There was fury in his voice as he followed the thieving hand up an arm to meet the eyes of Carol Marcus. “I’m trying to save a life, dammit, give that back.”

“Not until you answer the question. Have you been taking any kind of care of yourself at all?” And oh, it just figured she was a friend of Christine’s, because she was acting the exact same way Chapel always had before Jim scared her off to the boonies.

“I ate this morning, and darlin’, I’m a doctor. We don’t need sleep.” Leonard’s patience was running thin. He’d been so close to a breakthrough, he could feel it. Taste it even.

“Doctor McCoy, you do realize that Captain Kirk won’t suffer any further if you take a break to take care of yourself? You need to eat and sleep.” Doctor Marcus’s tone was firm, and she sounded like she was ready to drag him bodily from medbay, if only she could.

Leonard was having none of it. “Dr. Marcus, this is out of your purview. Jim is neither an advanced weapons system nor a machine. He’s _my_ patient, and it’s up to _my_ medical discretion as to how he’s treated, and how urgent that treatment is! Now give me back my PADD and get the hell out of my medbay; unless you’re hidin’ injuries somewhere, I’ve got work to do.” McCoy’s voice was a heated snarl. Who the hell did she think she was? Every second he wasted was a second that Jim was _dead_. Bones needed his PADD and notes like he needed oxygen.

Dr. Marcus looked stung, but reluctantly handed the device back to him. From that moment forward, she might as well have not existed for all the attention Leonard paid. Maybe a centrifuge would make it possible to increase the concentration of whatever the hell it was that made Khan’s blood so hellishly effective?

Three hours later, McCoy reached into his desk to pull out another dose of the stims that had kept him running flat-out since Jim had wound up on his table 79 hours ago.

* * *

It had been a week. A week since Jim last drew breath and a week and a day since Leonard had slept, and he felt that he was finally, maybe, nearly there. Khan’s blood was as concentrated and perfected as it was ever going to get, and god if he didn’t wish he had _more_ of it, the pint they’d taken for him to run tests and trials with almost half-gone, and shrunk down to only 150ml from the concentration process. That wasn’t even half a single unit of blood.

Proportionally he’d put more into the tribble, and it had taken it too long to recover for Leonard to be certain of staving off damage.

Jim had been dead for so long now, but keeping him in cryo was the only way to preserve his brain function. As soon as Leonard took him out, his brain function would start to degrade again, and there was no way to know if he could ever get it back even with the blood.

There was no way to be sure Jim wouldn’t be altered beyond recognition from brain damage.

Worse even than that was that he didn’t have enough to complete the treatment. Jim’s system wasn’t going to circulate the serum around itself until the serum took effect at the veins nearest the injection site. Through repeated testing with tribbles, McCoy had found that timing was indeed everything.

And his timing was ceaselessly faulty.

A single milliliter wasn’t enough to recover a half-kilo tribble. 150 ml would not be enough to recover an 84kg Jim. Especially not when Leonard needed to concentrate a good 30 ml in Jim’s brain and another 50 in his heart to get his most important systems started.

Then there were the numerous other injection sites and points on Jim’s body that would need 5 to 10 ml each to prevent nerve damage and recover the irradiated tissue. At minimum, McCoy estimated he was going to need 250ml of serum, and he just didn’t have it. Jim was dead and was going to _stay_ dead if McCoy tried the treatment with only the 150ml he had on hand. God, what was the damn point of the past week if Jim was allowed to stay dead? What was the point of _anything_?

It might be the stims talking, but Bones could see the future without Jim stretching out ahead of him, grey and blank and so, so empty. Never another one of those cocky smirks on the bridge, never another softer smile that was just for him? Never another chance to tell Jim what he meant to him? It didn’t bear thinking about.

That was why McCoy did what he did.

They were back on Earth, now, with Khan in an induced coma that a whole team of specially-trained doctors were monitoring closely, enough tranquilizers in him to kill a horse. More importantly, though, was the fact that Khan was there. Alive. With plenty of time to recover from the blood they’d drawn.

Glancing over at the (so tiny, how could someone as vibrant as Jim fit into such a small space?) cryogenics tube stored safely in his lab, McCoy knew what he had to do. He punched in a comm code and waited for it to chirp. “Spock,” he stated with no preamble, “I need you to meet me at my labs.”

“May I ask why, Doctor?” That voice sounded so much more suited to the tiny network of metal and wires that it was coming out of than Spock’s flesh-and-blood body.

“I need more blood.” Spock was the one with the clearance to get near Khan, not him. Even if the fact that the Vulcan couldn’t lie ate at the doctor, there was no one else he could even sort of trust.

“I am on my way to you now,” Spock replied.

Khan couldn’t consent to the withdrawal of his blood, not in the coma he was in. With anyone else, Leonard wouldn’t be able to stomach the thought of the blatant vampirism he was resorting to here. But Jim was lying dead in what might as well be a coffin, and Khan was the bastard that had put him there. Better men had done worse for less.

* * *

Spock hadn’t been nearly as hard to convince as Leonard had feared, and with 300ml of the purified serum he’d developed on hand, McCoy was ready to begin bringing Jim back to life. He didn’t allow himself to think of any other alternatives. Jim didn’t believe in no-win scenarios, and when it came to this, Leonard couldn’t afford to. McCoy had one shot at this, and he was determined it would go well.

Leonard had been prepping the OR, shuffling things around and getting things ready for the series of injections scheduled in three hours when there was an interruption. “Doctor McCoy?” The surgeon stiffened, not turning around as he tested the calibration on the machinery one more time.

“This is a sterile environment, you shouldn’t be in here.” His voice wasn’t exactly gentle, but he was kinder than he’d been to Doctor Marcus days ago. Had it been days? God.

There was no way of knowing, anyway, just how much the pointy-eared hobgoblin had told Lieutenant Uhura about what they had done. When people were dating, they tended to share things. Too many things. There was no way to know what she’d come for, and no way to know what she’d do if he let her see just how angry he was with her, with all of them.

“Leonard, don’t you think you should get some rest?” McCoy grit his teeth and clenched a hand around the edge of the metal surgical table, saying nothing. “I know how important this is to you, but…Have you slept at all since we got back to Earth?” She sounded kind, concerned, damn her.

“’Course I have. Man can’t go 192 hours without any sleep without keeling over, even with stims.” What he didn’t want to say was that his definition of sleep had actually been an exhausted stupor when even the stims failed to keep him upright, a stupor that lasted perhaps two hours, and it had happened a grand total of four times since he’d seen Jim cold on his table.

It looked like he didn’t have to.

“Leonard, you look like hell. Do you really want to perform this operation when you’re not at your best?” That got a bitter laugh out of the doctor. Leonard knew he was doing more than flirting with the line of addiction to stimulants; it was actually incredibly likely there was already one in the offing. There might be more stimulants than actual blood in his own veins right now, and _he didn’t care_. Then Uhura went for the big guns. “Jim would hate to see you like this – he wouldn’t want his death to do this to you.”

That tore it. McCoy whirled, staring her straight in the face for the first time in eight days. “How’n the hell am I supposed to know what Jim would and wouldn’t want? Huh? Because I would have sworn he’d want me there when he goddamn died, Lieutenant, but somehow I wasn’t called! _Clearly,_ I have no idea what he’d want, and since what you just said is what I woulda thought he wanted, it’s _obviously_ wrong.”

“Leonard…” Uhura moved closer, still with that same concerned look on her face – she honestly looked like she was going to hug him. McCoy couldn’t stand the idea, backing around the table. He was too pissed at her right now to even think about it. She’d been there and she hadn’t called him. She and Jim only sort of got along on the best of days. It wasn’t fair. “Leonard, please, there was nothing you could have done; it would only have hurt you to be there. We didn’t want you to have to watch it happen.” She honestly sounded like she believed it was the best thing for him, and she still had that pitying, this-is-an-intervention look on her face.

And he couldn’t stand how hypocritical that was. “What if it had been Spock, Nyota!” Each word was bitten off, sharp and desperate. “How would you feel if it had been _Spock_ on the other side of that glass and no one had the damned _courtesy_ to call you?”

Uhura looked like she was near tears at the very thought. “It’s different. Spock and I are – ” She started, but McCoy didn’t let her finish.

“What, together?” Leonard scoffed, shaking his head. “Jim means just as much to me as Spock ever could to you! What do you think my life’s like without him in it? However bad you think it is, multiply it by twenty! And Jim deserved to have someone there who cared about him, dammit! Why wasn’t I –” A sharp crack rang through the room, cutting him off. It took a second for him to penetrate the jittery keep-moving-forward of the stims enough to realize that the sound had been Uhura’s hand colliding with his cheek. When he did, he raised a hand to slap back, only to be cut off by the Lieutenant’s hissed words.

“Don’t you dare, Leonard. Don’t you dare suggest that Spock, Scotty and I don’t care about Jim too! We had our differences but he was always willing to throw himself into the fire to save all of us, and we cared about him too!” Uhura had gone from teary-eyed to filled with anger in an instant, and with the momentary flash of rage over Leonard had been unable to return exactly what he’d received, instead pressing his hand to his cheek to rub at the injury.

What she said didn’t change how he felt, however. “Not the way I did! Dammit, woman, I should have been there! I promised him I’d be the one fuckin’ person who’d never abandon him, and he died without seein’ me!” If he’d been there he could have tried something, anything to save him! Failing that, at least Jim would have had someone there who loved him more than he even knew. Leonard drew a shuddery breath. “Get the hell out of my operating theatre, Lieutenant; I have a procedure to perform in two and a half hours.” Now wasn’t the time to fall apart. He had to keep it together until Jim was stable.

* * *

With the tribbles, a dose equivalent to the size of the one Leonard had given Jim took about 30 minutes to take effect. That was a far longer margin than Leonard liked, but higher doses would only bring diminishing returns and institute a whole host of new potential problems. It was far from normal to go straight from testing on tribbles to testing on humans, but there wasn’t time for anything else. McCoy was far from comfortable with leaving Jim in cryostasis for longer than he had to. If he could have been sure of the results, he’d have given Jim a direct transfusion from Khan the second they’d caught the bastard, but the cryogenics unit had bought him some time.

Allowing for the differences between tribble physiology and human, Leonard had determined that post-injection, his monitors should start picking up the first signs of life in Jim starting any time after the 15 minute mark. The comfort window extended from 15 minutes post-injection up to an hour afterward. With the tribbles, he hadn’t been able to hook up monitors directly to the area of tissue he was injecting as effectively – Leonard’s hope was that the sensors over Jim’s heart and head would find renewed activity far before anywhere else. If the injection didn’t work, waiting that long would guarantee that Jim was well and truly dead, with no residual brain function left to preserve and restore. But he’d had no other choice. This was a single-shot roll of the dice, and if he didn’t roll now, he never would.

It had now been almost an hour past his anticipated window, and Leonard was shaking in the legs so badly he’d needed to sit down on the stool at the side of the table. Vomiting felt like a distinct possibility. His monitor was almost impossible to read through the tears standing in his eyes. _Something_ had been happening, some kind of change in Jim’s tissue, but his heart hadn’t started beating, and neither had the electrical signature in Jim’s brain come back online. Even though it had now more than doubled his acceptable time window, McCoy couldn’t, wouldn’t turn the sensors off. _Something_ happened there at the start, maybe it was continuing to happen.

That hope became frailer as it ticked into hour three and Jim remained a still, cold body attached to silent monitors.

“Doctor McCoy.” The voice made Leonard tense, shaking all over now as hot rage swarmed to life inside him.

“This is a sterile environment, you jackass, what d’you think you’re doing in here!” He snarled, turning to look at the Vulcan that had just entered the operating theatre. People needed to stop interrupting him, it was no goddamn wonder the injection was failing, Jesus, how was he supposed to keep the place clean enough to work with everyone coming in and out?

“Doctor, it is highly unlikely that my presence can do any additional damage to the Captain. Meanwhile the lack of it may result in you doing harm to yourself.” Leonard shuddered at the implication that Jim was beyond hurt or help, wanting to cry but refusing to let himself in front of the Vulcan with the stick up his ass.

“Harm to myself? I’m not some suicidal idiot, Spock, I’m not going to slit my wrists with the laser scalpel!” How damn dumb did the robot think he was? Just because the thought of life without his best friend in it made him want to lie down and not move, or to crawl into a bottle like he had following the divorce and never leave it, it didn’t mean he was going to hurt himself. McCoy was a professional; he knew what he was doing.

“I did not suggest that you would seek to end your life, I merely wished to ascertain that you would not engage in behavior more damaging to yourself than you already have over the past week should the procedure not work.” McCoy’s face was twisted up with anger, and his hands had formed fists before he even realized it.

“What the hell business is it of yours what I do? Leave me alone, dammit!” Spock looked less than impressed with the way the doctor’s whole body had started vibrating in rage, because the Vulcan sure didn’t move from right where he was standing. McCoy wanted to slug him.

“I will not. It seems prudent that someone remain with you in your current emotional state.” McCoy choked at the words, fighting again the urge to cry or kill something.

“What, just like you _remained_ with Jim? Fat lot of good that did him!” What he was saying was cruel, he knew that even as the words left his mouth, but he couldn’t stop himself. It hurt, dammit, killed him inside that Spock had been there - _Spock_ of all people, he’d once shot Jim out an airlock! – but Leonard hadn’t been. No one had called for him. He hadn’t even known Jim was in any more danger than the rest of them until it was too late. Hell, he hadn’t even seen the footage of the blows Khan had dealt him on the other ship until after. Stupid fucking Jim racing through the ship, climbing inside an irradiating warp core to save the rest of them with at least two broken ribs and probably a concussion.

And it _hurt_ to know everything Jim had suffered just to save them all. In the Academy McCoy had thought he could handle it, the danger and hurt that the most insufferable and radiant man he’d ever met would put himself through for everyone else. And on every other mission he’d been able to keep working, moving, focused on his own responsibilities and trusting Jim would come back to him to get patched up.

Then Jim didn’t.

It felt like a fist was squeezing his heart when he looked back at his captain’s body lying so still on the table, every monitor still at zero.

When he looked back, Spock’s face was as impassive as ever, and it added a knifing rage to the pain growing with every minute that ticked away with Jim not drawing breath. Then the Vulcan opened his mouth. “Doctor, there was nothing you could have done to prevent the captain’s death. All you could have done was assure the demise of yourself and everyone else in engineering by your efforts to save Kirk. I am certain the Captain knew this.” McCoy shook his head in denial.

“You’re wrong.” There had to have been something… Anything.

“I am not. There was nothing you could have done that I did not. Moreover, the Captain would never have forgiven you if you had opened the chamber before the decontamination was complete.” Spock’s voice was clipped, and it might be Leonard’s imagination or wishful thinking, but it looked like the guy was finally getting a little bit angry. Good.

“Prove it.” Leonard barely recognized his own voice, it was so flat and still, far removed from the rage he was feeling inside.

“I beg your pardon?” Spock asked.

“Prove it.” He repeated, stepping closer to Spock and gesturing at his own face. “Go on, then. Show me. You Vulcans can touch minds and share memories, can’t you? Show me. Show me I couldn’t have done anything.” Leonard hated the notion of anyone getting inside his mind, mistrusted telepaths and empaths alike, but he had to know.

“The sensor data should be all the evidence you require, doctor. I do not believe this course of action is a wise one.” Maybe McCoy was hallucinating, but Spock actually looked nervous. Not the way a normal person did, with darting eyes and perspiration, but he blinked more than his customary robotic rate, and his face looked more pinched than usual. He knew it wasn’t a hallucination when Spock took a half-step back.

“Well it ain’t. I should’ve been standin’ where you were, and if you’re so damn sure I couldn’t have done anything, prove it. _Put_ me where you were. Show me.” Spock stood in silence against his accusations and heckling for a few moments, before slowly nodding.

“You understand that you will not be merely seeing through my eyes. Your thoughts will be my thoughts, and mine yours. Given your current emotional state, this will be onerous for the both of us.” McCoy rolled his eyes and made a tching noise in his throat, tipping his face towards the Vulcan in challenge. “Very well.” Spock’s fingers splayed carefully across his face, cool and invasive. McCoy didn’t so much as flinch. He needed to see it. Jim wasn’t waking up behind him, wasn’t even setting off a single monitor, just a cold corpse. Any precious seconds he could scrabble of Jim’s life were a godsend. “My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts,” Spock’s voice intoned, and suddenly he was running in another body, flying through the ship to Engineering.

* * *

When the meld broke, Leonard was sobbing almost uncontrollably, gasping for air as he clutched at the table. All of the rage and pain he’d been feeling at what was looking more and more like a failure in front of him and the hurt at not being there had just combined with Spock’s own emotional pain at the moment of Jim’s passing. Leonard fell to his knees in front of the table and Spock, making a noise like a wounded animal.

Jim. Dear god, _Jim_.

He’d thought seeing it would make him feel better, as if he’d been able to be there for his _best_ friend as he breathed his last, but it didn’t. It didn’t make it better at all. It just made it worse, so much worse. Not only was Jim still laying prone and silent on that table, now Leonard knew what he’d looked like as the light had gone out of his clear blue eyes.

Another cry of agony ripped from him and he put his head down and sobbed like his heart was breaking, because it was. Jim, beautiful Jim, had died separated from everyone he loved by glass and radiation. Even Spock had been emotional at the sight, and Spock wasn’t the one in love with him!

“Doctor…” Spock started after a moment, crouching down to put a hand on his shoulder. “I must apologize. I was unaware of the depth of your feelings for the captain.”

Leonard just kept sobbing, trying to wrench himself back under control and failing dismally. It was too late to be concerned with his own privacy – what did it matter now that Spock knew Leonard was in love with a dead man? His roll of the dice had come up snake eyes, and there was no way word of it would ever reach Jim now. The past week of hope had been deluded and delusional, and there was nothing more he could do. Jim was well and truly gone now, four hours after the injection.

Then there was a beep.

McCoy’s breath caught as he listened.

Another.

The doctor surged to his feet, grabbing for the monitor nearest him as the indicators went wild. “Get the hell out of here, Spock, I’ve got a show to run!” Every scrap of hurt vanished, subsumed into an all-encompassing need to work. Triumph beat beneath his breastbone, awe and joy and hope surging again from the ashes as Jim’s life signs came back all at once, weak but strengthening quickly. McCoy never heard the swishing of the door as the Vulcan exited, too intent on conserving that strength and preparing Jim for post-op.

* * *

Jim’s body might have risen from the dead, but Leonard couldn’t be sure about his mind. Not right away. Days were lost to the bustle of keeping the man’s heart beating now that it had started again, IVs hooked upto provide nutrients and hydration as McCoy meticulously destroyed all but one copy of his notes on the whole process, saved only to further Jim’s treatment. Twelve days after Jim’s death, Leonard felt confident that he was stable enough to test and record at least some of his neural function.

When he’d thought the terror was over as Jim’s heart started beating, he was wrong. Watching Jim’s brain waves sketch patterns across the monitor, McCoy prayed. To what or who, he didn’t know, but he suspected it was mostly to Jim himself. _‘Just come back. Please come back. Don’t be brain-dead, kid, please don’t be dead. No no-win scenarios. You don’t believe in them. You dying is a no-win scenario to me, you asshole, so c’mon. I got you this far, we’ve got to get you the rest of the way.’_

And as the readings stabilized into something that looked like Jim’s usual delta-wave pattern and all the areas of Jim’s brain lit up as they should, Leonard took his first unburdened breath in days. Jim might still be unconscious, but with that kind of reading there was a chance it wouldn’t be forever.

That was the first night he let the stims run out, and he slept like the dead in a cot in the corner of Jim’s room. Boyce was penciled in to check on Jim during McCoy’s mini-coma, and Leonard trusted the man to wake him should anything change.


	2. Chapter 2

Leonard hadn’t been able to rouse himself the next day for anything save one staggered trip to the bathroom, but he couldn’t allow that to last. Even knowing what it was going to do to him, the following morning McCoy loaded a hypo with stims and pressed it to his neck. Sure enough, it took a higher dose than normal to clear the fog in his head. He would have cared more if Boyce hadn’t told him that Jim’s mental patterns had seemed to approach REM sleep three times while Bones couldn’t pull himself off the cot. Prolonging his detox was a small price to pay to ensure he was on hand when Jim woke up. 

Once he was dressed in the hospital wear on offer to him, he sent out a memo to the entire crew, alerting them of Jim’s progress and promising that when Jim woke up - _when_ , not if – he would notify them all accordingly.

Of course, certain parties just couldn’t wait. Spock showed up within two hours of the message, and took up a position next to the door from which he didn’t budge, like some kind of damn stone gargoyle. McCoy would have told him to leave, but that would involve talking to the man and really, Leo just wasn’t ready. If the Vulcan brought up the feelings for Jim that the mind-meld had revealed, he’d lose his mind, he really would. So as the hours ticked onward they maintained a silence between them, though on occasion Leonard talked to the empty air. With Spock over his shoulder he sure as shit wasn’t talking to Jim. Muttered comments to the machines and bleeping punctuated the air until Jim’s brain waves spiked. For tense moments he waited, hoping to see a flash of blue so badly that he nearly forgot Spock’s presence entirely.

It lasted for ten minutes and then the wave patterns slowly decelerated again, but only so far as REM sleep. McCoy blew out a heavy breath, before resuming his pacing. An hour later he pressed another stim to his neck, ignoring the heavy weight of Spock’s eyes on him. There was nothing to say. 

The machines picked up again around three o’clock – screw that military time bullshit, they were dirtside and it was three o’clock. This time, Jim’s eyelids fluttered and Leonard couldn’t help the overwhelming relief bubbling up inside him, making him nearly giddy. That was why his first words to Jim were almost playful. 

“Don’t be so melodramatic. You were _barely_ dead.” It was easier to tease Jim about being only mostly dead than it was to acknowledge that for over two hours he’d believed Jim truly was dead, gone, and lost to him forever. Giving the post-mission briefing to Spock and only interjecting on occasion was about all he had the mental fortitude for right now. 

At least Spock didn’t push it, and refrained from giving Jim too much detail about what McCoy specifically had done in his absence. 

Now that he thought about it, though, if Spock told Jim about the way they’d obtained the necessary quantities of blood, he’d be up shit creek too. Maybe there was some benefit of bringing the hobgoblin in on his crimes. 

Even after Spock had said all he came to say, it was easy enough to continue avoiding the hard questions by taking Jim for more extensive brain tests. Jim might be acting the way McCoy would expect, but he had no way to be sure there wasn’t some hidden brain damage just waiting to leap out at him. Jim complained and Bones rolled his eyes, grateful beyond measure that the man had woken up at all. Whatever residual damage there was or wasn’t, they’d deal with it. That was what he was here for. For his part, Jim kept from the hard questions himself, though Leonard knew his front of normalcy was cracking a little without an audience. 

One thing he couldn’t do was hold in a massive slow exhale of relief as the brain monitor showed no change from Jim’s last full-workup exam before they launched. If he hadn’t already done all the crying he was willing to do, he might have sobbed in relief. For all intents and purposes, Jim was still Jim. Anything else, literally _anything_ else, they could fix or live with as necessary. By the time Jim came out of the machine, McCoy had pulled himself back together. There was still a whole battery of psychological tests to be undergone, but not today. Besides, the rest of the command crew was doubtlessly already here, waiting to see Jim.

* * *

“Bo-ones, c’mon, I’ve passed every test you’ve thrown at me! Why can’t I go home yet?” The whine grated against Leonard’s nerves. As fucking overjoyed as he was for Jim to be there to whine at him at all, things just weren’t processing right for the doctor at the moment. Partial stim withdrawal could do that to a man.

“Because I fucking said so, Jim. You. Were. Dead. Does that not mean a goddamn thing to you?” McCoy snapped, scrubbing a hand over his face. Jim barely looked fazed, though there did seem to be a kind of concern coming from the captain and aimed his way. Dammit. Sighing, he let his shoulders slump out of the tense, drawn-up knot they’d been in. “I don’t know if the effects of the serum are going to wear off or not. The tribbles are fine, but you’re not exactly a tribble.” The very thought of the serum wearing off made Leonard feel ice running through his veins, but he had to impress upon Jim the importance of the monitoring. 

“I get it, Bones, I get that I died. I remember.” The haunted look on Jim’s face struck at him, but there was pretty much fuck-all Bones could do about it. “What’s the worst that can happen if it does wear off? I’m already healed. My cells aren’t irradiated anymore. If it stops regenerating me, so what? It’s not like it’s going to suddenly reverse everything.” 

McCoy shook his head. “What if it _does_?” Jim was too damn cavalier with his own life. Leonard picked a laser scalpel up off the tray he’d brought with him, grabbing Jim’s wrist without so much as a by-your-leave. With the tool on, he drew a thin line across the outside of Jim’s forearm. The cut healed almost as soon as the scalpel finished making it. “You ain’t going anywhere until that stops, kid.” 

Jim pulled the arm back to himself as soon as the doctor released it, frowning. “That hurt, Bones.” Almost as quickly as the frown had come, it was gone again. “Kiss it better?” The impish grin made him roll his eyes. But it didn’t stop the worry. Jim’s mercurial moods weren’t exactly making McCoy feel particularly at ease. All the tests said Jim was Jim, but there had to be trauma there the kid wasn’t dealing with at best. At worst, it was something more sinister.

McCoy really hoped this was a best-case scenario. His emotions couldn’t take much more yanking around. 

“There’s nothing _to_ kiss better.” Jim’s comment had been just a deflection, but still Bones couldn’t resist rising to the bait, if only so the kid lost that concerned look. “When that stops happening, and when you can make it from here to the end of the hallway without shaking, I’ll sign you out.” Jim’s face lit up, but Leonard cut across it quickly. “To _my_ care.” Leonard pretended the way the excitement on Jim’s face deflated didn’t sting. 

“How long?” Jim’s tone was a whine. 

Leonard really didn’t understand how he could be so abjectly, pathetically grateful someone was alive and still want to throttle him.

“At least a week. Depends on your recovery.” Just because Jim was passing his tests with flying colors didn’t mean he was completely perfect. It had only been a day and a half, for Christ’s sakes. A day and a half since Jim had opened those pretty blue eyes. Forgive him for being concerned. Jim might be healing at an alarming rate when it came to outright physical damage, but it seemed like some of his neural connections weren’t fully repaired yet, because when he walked there was a definite tremor after more than two steps. 

McCoy hoped fervently that it was just a case of disuse or something the serum hadn’t fully healed yet, and not a lasting condition. He didn’t know that Jim could forgive him if he were taken off the bridge of the Enterprise forever. No matter what condition the ship may be in currently, he knew his friend. The Enterprise shouldn’t leave spacedock with any other man but James T. Kirk at her helm. If she did, it would eat at Jim for a long damn time. 

Hell, the half-a-story he’d been able to discern en-route to Qo’onos about Jim’s demotion told him that much. Though he was certain that if given the chance to save Pike’s life or be Captain, there was no contest in what Jim would choose.

Holy Hannah, Jim still hadn’t had a real chance to grieve the Admiral’s demise. Maybe there was a reason the kid didn’t want to spend a week with a roommate again.

Bones came out of his thoughts to see Jim staring at him with a question in his eyes. “What?” he asked, only for the captain to shake his head. Still, that analyzing stare was worrying. Especially because Leonard had no idea what his face had looked like in those few moments as his thoughts wandered.

* * *

It was in his first one-on-one interaction with Scotty since Jim’s revival that McCoy realized it hadn’t just been him and Spock in that operating theatre. Highly classified as it was, Scotty at least had found his way into the barely-a-broom-closet viewing room.

The engineer was not the most subtle of souls, and the way he shifted back and forth from foot to foot in the hospital hallway spoke volumes. Leonard knew the Scot had seen something even before Scotty opened his mouth with what had to be the bluntest phrasing possible. 

“So, are you alright? I mean, not many men can keep operating after a breakdown like that, but are y’ sure you’re dealin’ with it?” Scotty asked.

McCoy stopped dead for a beat, processing the question. “Now how’n the hell…” Naively he’d assumed Scotty had just seen his tetchiness with Marcus, or crossed his path in the intervening days. Not that the Scot had been in the operating theatre. 

“Keenser and I mighta jimmied the lock to the observation bay.” Scott explained, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. 

“Just you and Keenser?” It had to be asked. Horror was rushing over McCoy in waves at the mere thought that Spock wasn’t the only witness. At least Spock had been a part of that emotional feedback loop too, knew that it wasn’t all only McCoy’s own emotions that had brought the doctor to his knees like that. Mostly, but not all.

“Ah…” Scott hesitated.

“Scotty...” McCoy groaned, already knowing whatever the answer was he wasn’t going to like it. But he needed to know who he couldn’t look in the eye anymore.

“Well, Lieutenant Uhura was mighty worried about him, and I couldn’t say no to her,” Scott started, and Leonard grunted. Of course. “And mister Chekov has some downright dangerous sad-eyes. So I let the bairn and Lieutenant Sulu in as well.” Today would be a nice day for the laws of physics to cease to apply. McCoy really wanted to sink into the floor right now. 

“Anyone _else_?” With his luck, it wouldn’t be just the bridge crew he couldn’t face, it’d be half of Medical as well.

“Dr. Marcus is incredibly pretty, sir.” When McCoy closed his eyes and started counting to ten, the engineer took it as a cue to finish quickly. “Look, I can see I’m doin’ ye no favors. I’ll just scuttle on in and see the Captain, shall I?”

Leonard let him go, slumping onto the bench outside that the Scot had just vacated. Splaying a hand over his face, he let out a deep, heartfelt groan, followed by a string of curses.

* * *

After that, Leonard went out of his way to avoid being alone with any of the bridge crew. It wasn’t that hard; Jim was the one who had _died_ and Jim was the one who wanted to hear all of their reports on what happened after. All Bones had to do while Jim was still in the hospital was avoid letting them catch him in the hallway outside the captain’s room.

It wasn’t like they had access to the small closet with a cot he’d taken to using since Jim woke up. 

Maybe he could have gone home, maybe he should have gone home, but when he still couldn’t shake the fear that Jim’s systems were going to crash the instant he was more than two minutes away, going home wasn’t an option. 

Just like not using a stim to get up in the morning wasn’t an option. Without it he could barely move, let alone think. He’d taken to setting the hypo on the floor next to the cot so he didn’t have to get up to retrieve it. 

This was only making his system more dependent on the compound, and was against all medical advice he’d ever give anyone else, but McCoy promised himself that when Jim’s unnatural rate of healing stopped, he’d stop. Until then he had to be alert, just in case.

Boyce was good, but he wasn’t Jim’s doctor. Leonard was. 

Besides, if Leonard didn’t treat him, Jim would wonder why. There were some things Jim just didn’t need to know.

* * *

Avoidance couldn’t last forever, especially when the people he was avoiding were the some of the brightest damn people in Starfleet.

“Your face is really not the one I want to see this early,” McCoy complained, as he opened the door to his temporary bedroom only to see Spock staring back at him implacably. 

“Doctor. I believe we need to talk.” There was no hesitation over the colloquial phrase, even though normally it was like pulling teeth to get Spock to say anything less than perfectly literally. 

Leonard had a very bad feeling about this. “Now?” 

“Yes,” Spock responded. He gained entrance to the room by the simple expedient of stepping forward and forcing Leonard to give ground or wind up chest-to-chest. Physical contact with the touch telepath was really not high on his list of things to do today, especially after he’d had Spock in his head once. 

When the door shut behind the Vulcan, McCoy decided that if he couldn’t escape, he’d just get it over with.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“Doctor, it has come to my attention that over the course of the past 17.42 days, you have greatly exceeded the recommended dosage of stimulants. That you have in fact been routinely overriding the dosage limit in your file and self-medicating.” Oh, shit. “While I refrained from speaking on the matter whilst you were still amid preparations for the injections, at this point there is no further need for you to endanger yourself in this manner.” Jesus, couldn’t Spock have left it alone for two more days? If the time frame from the tribbles held true, that was all he would have needed.

“Look, flatterin’ as it is that you’ve decided to go become my own personal stalker, I know what I’m doing. I’m a doctor, not a drug addict.” Thanks to the small dose he’d already used, he felt human enough to respond to the question with his typical bite and sarcasm. “When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.” _’Don’t hold your breath, either.’_

Only Spock didn’t look impressed. “The problem with your assessment is that at the moment you are making an effort to become both. You cannot persist in using the stimulants when the Captain is no longer in such grave danger.” 

“If I didn’t know better I’d say you cared.” No matter what that meld would have him believe, emotions and Spock were still a very foreign subject. Thinking about the fact that Spock had cried over Jim still gave McCoy the heebie-jeebies. Worse was knowing he’d badgered the Vulcan into letting him see it, and witnessed something Spock was almost certainly not proud of. 

The look on Spock’s face suggested that Leonard knew full well about the emotions the First Officer would never admit to. 

Leonard sighed. “I’ve got no plans to do this forever, Spock. But Jim _isn’t_ out of the woods yet, dammit. I don’t know what’s going to happen when the serum stops working, but it might leave him irradiated all over again. I’ve got to be alert in case that happens.” 

“So will you swear to it that once the accelerated healing has stopped, you will also cease in your stimulant abuse and take steps to care for yourself?” That was far stricter an interpretation than Leonard liked – he was about to be bunking with Jim, and he did not want his friend seeing him going through the aftershocks as his body adjusted to the lack of outside assistance. But the look on Spock’s face suggested that the only way he was letting the doctor leave this room was if Leonard swore to his terms.

“Fine. When Jim stops healin’ like tribbles repopulate, I’ll stop taking the stims.” McCoy promised, crossing his arms defensively over his chest. “We done?”

Spock clasped his hands behind his back. “Almost. Dr. Boyce sent me to inform you that the Captain’s wounds no longer reseal in instants, but have returned to normal rates.” 

McCoy’s colorful string of invective chased the Vulcan down the hall as Spock beat a well-planned retreat.

* * *

As they entered McCoy’s small Starfleet-issue apartment, Jim’s head swiveled around like he was surveying everything. Leonard, frankly, didn’t get it. It wasn’t as if the kid was a stranger to Leonard’s space, or how it was kept. They’d been in and out of one another’s quarters on the ship plenty of times, to say nothing of the two years they’d spent as roommates at the Academy, after they both realized they practically were anyway, since Jim never seemed to go home when he could crash at McCoy’s.

Leonard didn’t get that either – the kid chose couch or floor over a perfectly serviceable bed. Made no sense. Ah, the follies of the young.

McCoy kept an eagle eye on Jim as the other man walked into the room. The shakes were subsiding with regular physical exercise, but the damn idiot had insisted on using the stairs. It was only two flights, but at the start of the week Jim wouldn’t have been able to manage two _steps_ before the tremors took him over. Yet he’d made it all the way here without needing Leonard’s help. A flush of warmth ran through the doctor, and he clamped down on the urge to smile, keeping the expression only to his eyes and the faintest quirk around his lips. When Jim’s quick healing had stopped, McCoy had about had a goddamn heart attack. Especially since no one had bothered to call him about it. 

But now? For the first time he was starting to honestly believe that Jim wasn’t just temporarily not dead, but that he might honestly have managed to pull this thing off. It made his chest ache like crazy, but Leonard was pretty sure it was the good kind of ache. Considering what it had felt like before, this was definitely a healing pain and not the pain of coming further unglued. “You gonna sit down or are you just gonna stand there all day?” He finally asked, urging Jim to move the rest of the way into the room. 

Jim obliged, letting the door swish shut behind him, then gave Leonard a look. The doctor raised his eyebrows in question. What the hell was that face about? 

“Bones…You haven’t been in here since we landed,” Jim commented.

“What makes you say that?” Because seriously, how the hell could Jim tell that? Starfleet didn’t let the apartments start smelling stale. Sure, no one at all had swung by here since the Enterprise landed, since Chapel was gone and she was the only one who really would have been close enough and cared enough to do it for him when Jim was incapacitated. Still, it didn’t look that disused. 

“Your bed’s made.” Jim gestured towards the open door to the bedroom. 

“So what? I make my bed.” He made his bed really well, too, hospital corners and everything. 

“Yeah, but with how much time you’ve been with me at the hospital, and how exhausted you are, you wouldn’t be interested in making it.” Jim had a point. Today had gone steadily to hell as far as McCoy’s level of function was concerned, after that ‘good morning’ stim had worn off. All he wanted to do was crawl into that made bed. But he had to get Jim settled first. “Even if you were interested in making it, look at your comm. It’s blinking with about 99 missed calls. I’m betting it’d be higher if the number display _went_ higher.” 

Leonard rolled his eyes. “Jesus, whatever. Yes, I’ve been crashing at the hospital. There’s uniforms, food, and a cot in a quiet closet. Don’t see why it’s such a big thing.” It was easier to admit it than to try to fight Jim on it. “I needed to be on hand.” 

“This past week you could have slept at home, Bones.” Jim looked sincerely worried about him. Leonard felt uncomfortable. 

“No I couldn’t have.” Because he wouldn’t have slept, if he’d been here and not there. “Doesn’t matter anyway, we’re here now.” Shrugging off the line of questioning, he set his medkit and Jim’s duffle down in the doorway and moved to the bedroom closet to pull out spare linens for the couch. Even sleeping on a couch was going to be a miracle, he was just so tired. 

Of course, he still had to get through the rest of the day. It was barely 4pm even after all the discharge papers had been filed and signed and the appropriate files burned. Digging in the bag he’d had Spock pack for Jim, he pulled out the captain’s PADD. 

“Here. Take it. You’re cleared for paperwork duty.” It might be a not-so-subtle effort to get the kid out of his hair, but right now he didn’t have the energy to deal with an amped-up or worried Jim. He’d much prefer if Jim would just take the damn PADD, do his paperwork, and let Leonard relax. And by relax the doctor really meant ‘watch Jim do paperwork and pretend to do my own.’ But that was actually the most restful thing he could think of right now.

Jim still gave him suspicious looks, but it seemed for once like he was with the plan.

* * *

The week passed far faster than Leonard would have liked, even if every night was a battle over who slept in the bed (‘ _It’s your bed, Bones._ ’ ‘ _Dammit Jim, you’re the patient. Get in there._ ’). McCoy had won by dint of simply parking himself on the couch and refusing to move. Or by threatening to keep Jim under observation longer.

And if on the fifth night Leonard was woken from his sleep by the sound of Jim’s quiet sobbing in the bedroom, and if he’d quietly gone in to hold his friend as he mourned the loss of Captain Pike the way Bones wished he would have been able to do before the mission, well, they didn’t talk about that.

Just like they didn’t talk about Leonard’s nightmares, or the fact that sometimes he wandered into the bedroom afterward to just stand and listen to Jim breathe for a few minutes. 

Sharing space was almost as natural as it had been at the Academy, despite the broken edges on the both of them and the fact that they’d gotten used to privacy over the two years of Jim’s captaincy so far.

They hadn’t been in the apartment the entire time, even though it was the best place to hide from the paparazzi. What seemed like the entire bridge crew had come by in turns, dragging them to different cafes. Mostly they wanted to drag Jim, but while Jim was under observation he had a McCoy-shaped shadow. 

The enforced closeness meant that when the week ended, and Jim returned to his own apartment, Leonard felt the emptiness like a hollow ache in his side. Without Jim in the next room, there were moments when McCoy wasn’t sure if his memory was playing tricks on him. Did the serum really work? Was Jim actually alive?

When those moments happened during the day, Leonard sent a quick text-based message to Jim, needing the simple response. Nights were another story. The first night in his own bed was hard. Nightmares dragged him out of sleep within two hours of lying down on his soft, clean bed. Jim had insisted on being a good guest and changing the sheets, and they smelled of nothing more than laundry soap. It had only made the dreams worse, made him question if Jim had ever been here at all. 

Thankfully, the sheets might be off the bed, but McCoy hadn’t needed to do laundry yet. Still feeling his heart beating a mile a minute inside his chest, Leonard staggered over to his hamper and rooted around until he found a pillowcase. And though he felt pathetic for doing it, he brought it back to the bed. Slipping it over the spare pillow, Leonard laid back down and pressed his face against it. It was only then that his heart-rate started to slow and the fine tremors in his limbs stopped.

This was just something else Jim didn’t need to know.

* * *

It was only a few days after Jim had returned to his own quarters that Leonard got any visitors of his very own, and when he did, he truly wished he hadn’t. Quite aside from the personnel who had shown up to drag him to mandatory debriefs once they realized he was now free to do so, there was the personal visitor. 

Lieutenant Uhura was not a woman Leonard went out of his way to piss off. Partially because anyone who was crazy enough to sleep with Spock had to have some kind of dangerous mental instability that he didn’t want to trigger, but mostly because she herself was scarily competent, collected, smart as a whip, snarky, and no-nonsense. If his affections hadn’t been elsewhere, he might have been a little in love with her.

Right now, though, she was high up the list of people he did not want to see outside his door. “Lieutenant. What can I do for you?” Leonard seriously hoped the answer was ‘nothing, wrong door’ even though he was the only command crew member with an apartment in this building. 

“We need to talk.” She looked calm, but also intent. It was highly unlikely he was getting her to leave his doorstep without letting her in. 

Worth a shot, though. “Why? So you can slap me again?” Leonard still didn’t think that was deserved. His own pain had been choking the life out of him, but he’d kept his own violent impulses in check.

A look of chagrin and sorrow crossed Uhura’s beautiful face, and McCoy stomped ruthlessly on the part of himself that felt like an asshole. “That’s part of what I’d like to talk to you about. May I please come in?” The tone of her voice was hopeful, as if he might actually let her in without further rigmarole. 

It wasn’t the hope that decided him. It was the steel in her spine and eyes that said even if he decided to make her run a merry dance, she would be coming inside or they would be having this conversation in the hallway. Leonard wasn’t eager to have this conversation in the hallway. 

“Fine.” His momma might have taught him to be courteous, especially to women, but right now stepping back and keeping an arm out to block the door open as she entered was the best he had. Once he let it shut behind her, he crossed his arms over his chest, frowning. “I already know I’m not going to like this conversation.”

Nyota turned to face him and took a deep breath. “Leonard, first things first. I want to apologize for slapping you – no matter what you said, you didn’t deserve that, and I’m sorry.” McCoy let his stance soften a very little. “I was hurting at the time, but more, I was scared for you. And when you weren’t taking me seriously, I got angry and lost control.” She paused, looked away, and then looked back into his eyes. “I am truly sorry for that.”

Leonard wanted to hold onto the anger, all the pain he’d felt knowing Nyota had been in his place added to the fact that she’d smacked him for what he’d said. But the thing was, he understood. He’d been about to slap her right back, hadn’t he, once she broke the barrier against violence? Jim got under everyone’s skin, apparently, even people who pretended to hate him. 

That still didn’t make this a conversation he wanted to have. “Apology accepted. That it?” his tone suggested that he really hoped it was. 

From the way her face regained some of its serenity even as her eyes looked even more worried, he knew it wasn’t. “No. Leonard… You’re my friend. You know that, right?” Suspicion written all over his face, McCoy nodded slowly. “And I don’t mean to pry into personal issues – ” 

Yeah, that was far enough. “So don’t.” He cut her off quickly. Even more than he’d suspected when she first walked into the room, this was nothing he wanted to hear. If she was going to try to have a heart-to-heart with him, he might need to drink about half a bottle of Tennessee, and he wasn’t sure even that would cut it. “Nyota, I appreciate the concern. But there are certain things I’m tryin’ to forget, and the fact that all of my coworkers saw me have a breakdown because I dared Spock to poke around in my brain is right at the top of the list.” 

It stalled her out, temporarily, but Uhura was nothing if not determined. “I just wanted to make sure you knew you had someone to talk to if you need it. And I wanted to say I’m sorry for taking your relationship with the Captain for granted. It’s obvious he means more to you than I’d realized.”

Leonard’s throat felt tight, and shame was burning up the back of his neck. His feelings for Jim really weren’t something he liked to advertise, and there were some emotions he was capable of keeping to himself, even if no one would believe it. While it was true most of the things he was feeling were stamped across his face for the world to see, the love he felt for Jim was different. It was something he poured into their friendship, because that was where it had grown from. Bones highly doubted Jim had ever realized that the affection and care all over the doctor’s face when they were alone together was anything more than a brotherly bond, filial love. And Leonard had been just fine with that.

Fine until he wasn’t anymore, until Jim was gone and he realized that his biggest regret was that Jim died not knowing he was loved.

But now that he had Jim back, he wasn’t going to rock the boat just yet. None of them on the whole damn ship were stable, and with the enormous betrayal Admiral Marcus’s efforts to kill them all represented, the only people they knew they could trust were their own. That meant _Enterprise_ , not Starfleet. So the last thing he wanted to do right now was pull the rug from under the focal point of the entire crew.

“Jim means a hell of a lot to a hell of a lot of people. You probably didn’t realize how much he meant to you until he was gone, either.” Leonard offered quietly.

Let her think that was all it was. She didn’t need to know about the three years he’d lived with knowing he was in love with a man who could never give him what he needed from a relationship. Leonard held no illusions about his best friend. Jim was many things, but monogamous wasn’t one of them, and Leonard didn’t know that he could stand anything else. Not after Jocelyn.

It was startling, however, to realize that he’d been in love with Jim for over half the time he’d known him, now. At least now he could honestly say his feelings wouldn’t change anything about how he acted towards the other man.

“I guess that’s true, but still. Kirk’s always insisting we’re all a family and the senior staff more than most. I wanted you to know you have somewhere to turn. It’s not easy,” he glanced over, seeing her lips start to form an ‘l’ shape before she thought better of it and changed the word, “caring so much about the men in charge.” 

Leonard didn’t want to talk about this now any more than he had when she’d shown up at his door. “Like I said, Lieutenant, I appreciate the concern. But I’ve got this under control.” Or he would, if Nyota would leave him alone to keep exercising said control in the form of not thinking about his mental breakdown. 

“I don’t think you do, Leonard. You really need to talk to someone. A professional, ideally.” As if he wasn’t the professional everyone else was going to have to see for their trauma when they were back aboard ship. If they got back aboard ship. Scotty had been practically crying over the state of the Enterprise when he visited Jim at Leonard’s apartment. “It’s never easy to see a colleague die, even if you get him back. Especially not when…” At least she had the grace not to finish that sentence.

“In case you’d forgotten, I _am_ a professional.” McCoy started slowly herding her towards the door. “Anyway, I don’t trust much of the rest of Starfleet right now.”

For a moment, Nyota stopped and refused to be herded. Leonard wound up uncomfortably close to her face, and those assessing brown eyes. “None of us do, Len. None of us do.” Swallowing, he nodded. He couldn’t imagine any of them would. “That’s why I’m telling you that if you need to talk, I’m willing to listen.” She held his gaze, then nodded to herself and stepped back when she found whatever she was looking for in his eyes. “Alright. I’ll leave you in peace to think about it, but I just wanted to be sure you knew you weren’t alone.”

Just like that, she headed towards the door, but stopped inside sensor range to look over her shoulder at him. “By the way, Spock told me Jim’s arranging a team dinner to bond over having made it. Thought you’d appreciate an advance warning before he drags you to it without notice like he does.” Smiling a little, she stepped out the door. “Good night.” 

A little dumbfounded, Leonard stepped forward to keep the panel open. “Good night. And… thanks.” He pretended he meant it for the warning about dinner. Nyota’s smile told him she knew exactly what he was really trying to say, as he stepped back and let the door close.


	3. Chapter 3

The dinner was a nice idea - in _theory_. In practice, Carol hadn’t been able to speak more than six words to him, Scotty had been awkward but determined to not seem awkward, Chekov had given him the saddest puppy eyes he’d ever seen, Uhura had cast more glances his way than she ought, Spock was more taciturn with him than usual, and Sulu was the only one acting as if nothing were wrong.

That only made him all the more suspicious.

So Leonard decided to be proactive about it. Better to have his first one-on-one confrontation with the pilot when he wasn’t trapped in an enclosed space with him. After the vaguely-uncomfortable-for-everyone-and-acutely-uncomfortable-for-McCoy dinner with the rest of the command crew, he caught Hikaru’s arm and tugged him aside. 

“Alright. Let’s have it.”

Sulu frowned at him. “Have what?” 

McCoy rolled his eyes. “Whatever you’ve got to say to me about what happened while Jim was out. I’ve already heard it from everyone else, so you might as well say whatever you need to, too.”

Understanding lit the pilot’s eyes. “Alright then.” Sulu paused. McCoy braced himself. “I didn’t see anything.” 

Leonard blinked. “What?”

“I. didn’t. see. anything.” The other man gave him the slightest of smirks. “Just remember never to piss me off.” With that said, Sulu slipped away from the stunned doctor.

“…The hell just happened?” McCoy asked the empty air a few moments later.

* * *

Leonard had thought the ambushing phase of their friendship had ended. He didn’t know why he’d suffered this delusion, as Jim had employed his stealthy lurking only three months ago to catch the doctor before he could enter a room full of angry diplomats and make the situation worse, but still. It was a surprise to leave the mess hall only for a blue-eyed shadow to separate itself from the wall in his wake. “Is the cloak-and-dagger routine really necessary?”

It was alarming when Jim didn’t rise to the bait. The kid loved spy talk and jokes. “Bones, why were they all looking at you like you were going to break?” Jim asked, straight to the point. It took the doctor aback, but McCoy decided the better part of valor was playing dumb. 

“What are you talking about? It was fine.” The skeptical look on his friend’s face made Leonard nervous. 

Jim shook his head and crossed his arms, falling in step with him as he headed towards his apartment. “If that was fine, I hate to see your definition of awkward. What was that all about?” Maybe if Leonard ignored him, Jim would drop it? No, that didn’t seem likely. 

As his long stride continued eating up the ground between the cafeteria and his building, he shrugged. “How should I know? You’re the one who just died. The weirdness was probably you.” McCoy could hardly believe he made those words sound so casual, so _normal_. As if Jim died every day or something, as if just the memory of those four black hours thinking the injection failed didn’t make the doctor feel cold all over.

Jim kept up, following him through the entry of the building and into the stairwell. The benefit of campus apartments was their nearness to the ground. Starfleet held prime real estate in San Francisco, enough to allow the housing to be built low, some of which topped out at a meager (by city standards) 12 stories. 

“See, that’s what I would have thought too, but I’ve been catching up with everybody else alone since you released me from observation, and they haven’t been this tentative around me in a while.” Jim sounded a little out of breath, but that didn’t prevent him from chattering on as he followed the doctor up the two short flights to his apartment’s entry. “So what’s going on with them and you?”

Leonard shoved open the fire door at the top of the stairwell with his shoulder, finally stopping once he was outside his own door. “Nothing for you to worry about. Want a drink?” Because even with this line of questioning, Jim had followed him home. The kid still wasn’t at full strength yet, even though he was getting closer, and he’d walked all this way. Not letting him in or letting him rest would be rude.

“Sure, I’ll take a drink.” Jim agreed easily, and McCoy hoped that was the end of it. Hoped, but doubted. Still, he opened up his rooms and made for the bottle of Tennessee, pouring them each a generous glass. 

At least Jim had the courtesy to wait until the liquor was poured and they were both sprawled on McCoy’s couch before he opened his mouth again. “Seriously though, Bones. Were you at a different dinner than I was? Because every time Chekov looked at you I could practically see him welling up.” Pity Jim’s courtesy couldn’t extend to dropping this entire conversation. “Dr. Marcus looked like she thought you were going to eat her when you asked her to pass the pepper, and you got dates in the academy – your flirting’s not _that_ bad.” 

Bones groaned and rolled his eyes. “Dammit, Jim. I’m giving you good whiskey here. Least you can do is not give me the third degree while you’re drinkin’ it.” Leonard meant that complaint, too, but he knew even as the words left his mouth that it was too laid-back to truly discourage Jim. And he didn’t know that he wanted to discourage Jim. Because even though he didn’t really want to admit to how much of a wreck he’d been in those two weeks without Jim, he also didn’t want Jim to leave. It wasn’t like they hadn’t seen one another since Jim moved back into his own apartment, but it wasn’t the same. Reassuring himself that Jim was alive took much more effort now, for one. 

That and he just plain missed his friend. “Anyway, Sulu was just fine.” Oh, that was great, he’d been reduced to defending himself like there was actually something to defend. 

“Sulu was the only one; literally, even Keenser was looking at you differently.” Jim countered. McCoy scowled and took a drink because he had nothing to say. “And even then you had to pull him aside afterwards to find out why he wasn’t looking at you like you were someone he didn’t know.” Jim’s voice had been almost light up until now, but now the captain set aside his glass and leaned forward to brace his forearms on his knees and look at Leonard intently. The doctor swallowed hard. This was not good. At all. “Bones, are you going to tell me what happened?” 

Leonard had always been better at dealing with other people’s problems than his own. Hell, it was part of why he’d become a doctor. Even though part of him wanted Jim to know, to have some idea of how much it had _hurt_ to open a body bag and see the face of the man he loved staring up at him cold and empty, the larger part wanted to bury that pain deep and guard it. “Don’t think so, no.” 

“Thought you might say that,” Jim sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. A chill ran down Leonard’s back. This was probably not going to be good, because Jim still had that intent look on his face. Bones didn’t think he’d ever been the recipient of this particular stare before. “How about you start by telling me why Spock had to ask me if you were using stims to get up in the morning while you had me under observation?”

This was definitely not a conversation he wanted to have, let alone have while sober. McCoy knocked back the rest of his drink and poured another. “I had a lotta work to do, Jim, and no one else to do it. I mighta overstretched the advisable stim period by a bit.” It was defensive, sharp, but he still didn’t regret what he’d done. Just the way everyone else was acting about it.

Jim’s eyes sharpened, like he’d expected Leonard to deny it. With the walking computer on his case, though, there was no point. Bones took another drink. “A bit? Eighteen days isn’t a _bit_ , Bones.” The disapproving tone made McCoy roll his eyes again. Eighteen days not knowing if Jim was going to live and in what state certainly wasn’t a bit, that much was right. 

“I didn’t exceed it by eighteen days, Jim, and I didn’t even start taking them for 48 hours. So if Spock told you I was running on stims alone for 288 hours, take him with a grain of salt.” Leonard snapped irritably, pouring the rest of his second glass into his mouth.

Only apparently Spock hadn’t said exactly how long McCoy had been reliant on stims, because Jim’s eyebrows flew to his hairline. “Bones… that’s 12 days. At best that means you were using stims to keep going for ten days.” The concern in the kid’s tone was going to kill him. It sounded softer than he’d expected, less like a friend scolding another for being stupid, and almost like Jim was figuring it out. “You bitch if I use them for more than 48 hours!” Worry and wonder. If Leonard had to describe that tone, those were the words he’d use. Maybe with a smidgeon of anger in there too. 

Bones poured himself another drink. “That’s because they can be addictive, and I don’t want to treat your ass for something else.” From the look on his friend’s face, that attempt at normal banter went over like a lead balloon. In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have reminded Jim that overuse of stims could lead to reliance on them. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize lecturin’ a doctor on stim use is in your job description. I ate, I slept, I had it under control.” Leonard didn’t say how much of either he’d done, for good reason. Even so, it didn’t make Jim stop looking at him like he looked at Jim whenever he caught the man hiding an injury.

That was actually a comparison he could have lived without.

“You… It is when it took Spock tricking you into a promise and locking you out of the stim requisition files to get you to stop, _after_ I was awake!” Jim was almost shouting at him. At the moment, Leonard didn’t much care. Jim was alive to shout at him, and that was about all that mattered, even if he was accusing Leonard of trying to become a stim addict. 

“I took a night’s comedown after you stopped being…y’know.” It wasn’t nearly enough, and Jim probably knew that. “The procedure was classified. I was the only one with access to work on you. If anything went wrong, Jim, I had to be alert. Half a dose in the morning to keep moving isn’t that bad.” Jim looked like he thought it was that bad. “You wanna talk about poor health decisions, should we go into running through the ship with broken ribs and a concussion?” If they did, McCoy had Jim on multiple counts. 

The worried look on Jim’s face disturbed the doctor. But it looked like the kid was going to drop the subject, which was good. Except then Jim turned the topic to one Leonard liked even less. “I also heard that you demanded a meld from Spock to see… to feel like you’d been there. When I died.” The tone of Jim’s voice now was almost fragile, and it said something that Jim picked up his own glass again to drink from it. 

Bones wanted nothing more than to shield him from the topic, but he also wanted to make sure his friend had someone to talk to about the trauma induced by knowing he was going to die, feeling his body give up, and then waking up again. “Not talking about that, Jim. Stop listening to the Vulcan.” Leonard grouched, turning away a little bit to cradle his drink closer to him. 

Jim held his ground, finishing his glass and putting it aside again without making an effort to pour a second one. “Spock wasn’t the one who told me.” Goddamn. That was not a good sign. That meant someone else on the crew had opened their mouth about it. Spock might have kept the breakdown to himself. Anyone else… no guarantees. “Chekov was very concerned about your reaction to it.” Leonard tensed, looking anywhere but at Jim. “I told him melds can get pretty intense.” 

McCoy swallowed hard, and nodded slightly, nose stinging at the memory of what that meld had felt like. Spock’s pain pressed to his pain, watching Jim die behind glass. Intense didn’t even begin to cover it. “They can. Thanks. For Chekov.” Even if he wished the youthful ensign had just kept his mouth shut and thought whatever he wanted as long as Jim didn’t know, at least Jim was doing damage control with the navigator. 

Jim shrugged and Leonard could feel the motion through the fabric of the couch. “It wasn’t him alone that worried me, anyway. It was hearing that you thought you’d abandoned me by not being there.” Shit. Spock. Had Spock actually told tales about what he’d seen in McCoy’s head, because if so, that hobgoblin was going to learn just why Jim avoided McCoy when the doctor had a hypo in hand…

“Was Uhura right, Bones?” Uhura? Oh god damn it, there were things he’d implied to her that Jim was _never_ supposed to know. “Did you… Do you really think I was mad at you for not being there?” Damn that note of vulnerability in Jim’s voice all to hell. 

Bones crossed his arms and scowled at his glass, before grabbing the bottle and filling it again, to the brim. Half of the liquid in the glass disappeared in a single swallow, and he refilled it again, only an inch below the top. “It doesn’t even matter, Jim. Whether you were mad at me or not, it doesn’t matter. _I’m_ mad at me.” 

At some point he looked away from his glass to stare at Jim, desperate for his friend to understand. “I left you _alone_ , kid. Spock and Uhura don’t count. They’re not your best friend. They didn’t promise themselves not to leave you behind.” ‘ _I did._ ’ “I wanted you to have that from me until you could find more people who never would, and you still died alone. Without me.” That was probably something he shouldn’t have said, and he couldn’t even blame the whiskey. Not yet. It was coming closer; he could feel his control starting to slip a little. Maybe getting drunk wasn’t the best way to handle this conversation after all. “I should have been there.” 

Jim stretched out to clasp a palm against McCoy’s shoulder, and the doctor shuddered. That felt a lot like forgiveness, and it was weakening his defenses a little bit more. “Bones… It’s not your fault. I told Scotty not to call you down.” 

“What?!” Leonard reared back, startled. “Why would you do that? What the hell, Jim!” Call him crazy, but if he was dying and only had a few minutes to live, one thing he was going to be damn sure of was the chance to say goodbye to Jim. Even if all Jim felt for him was friendship, why the hell wouldn’t he do the same? 

“There were people you could actually save.” Jim’s words made him tense under the grip and glare for all he was worth. _That_ was Jim’s excuse?

“Just how goddamn useful do you think I was when Scotty’s team brought you into Medical twenty minutes later?” Bones snarled, still not able to force himself to brush off Jim’s hand. “I know why you went in that fucking chamber, Jim, but why the hell would you not let me be there for you? Why Spock of all people and not me?” Jesus, the reminder hurt. 

The memory of the meld made him choke up, and Jim took advantage to run him over with words. “God, Bones, I wanted…” Abruptly Jim changed course, whatever he was going to say dying on his tongue. “I didn’t want you to have to see it. Scotty was already tearing up, and I didn’t want to. Spock was so fucking calm, you remember, when he was the one…” 

And now Bones was hurting _and_ feeling guilty, because the last thing he wanted was to make Jim relive those moments any more than he already must in his nightmares. Normally he didn’t chug good whiskey, but tonight… McCoy threw back the entire tumbler’s worth and set it aside before he hurt himself with it. 

“Dammit, Jim, don’t measure yourself to him! For fuck’s sakes, kid.” It had him meeting Jim’s eyes again, at least, as he reached out to mirror Jim’s grip on his bicep. “You shouldn’t have had to _die_ like that…” his voice broke on the word ‘die,’ and he couldn’t bring himself to care. “You saved us all and you had _Spock_ as your send-off? Christ…” his eyes stung, but he didn’t let go.

Jim shuddered under his grip, and his voice came out quieter than before. “I didn’t want to have to see you crying, Bones. I wouldn’t have been able to keep it together. I needed to keep it together.” McCoy’s hand tightened convulsively, hard enough he knew it had to hurt. 

“Goddamn it, Jim! You didn’t need to do shit. You were dying! You don’t think there are allowances for that?” There was no way to pretend he wouldn’t have been crying his fucking eyes out if he’d been there, even the goddamn hobgoblin had cried. “Instead I sobbed myself raw in front of _Spock_ of all people, and the whole fucking command team, because you didn’t want to cry in front of me! _Me_ , Jim, I’ve seen it before! ” Bones was so angry he could hardly see straight. “The hobgoblin had his damn fingers in my brain and stuck me with how much _he_ was hurting for being so helpless, and he’s not even goddamn in love with you!” 

The abrupt, sudden silence that followed that phrase took a moment to really hit him, as neither of them so much as breathed or blinked. Leonard wondered, for a moment, if he could get away with pretending those last four words had never left his mouth.

Jim’s face quickly convinced him otherwise. “Bones…” McCoy swallowed and looked away, cursing himself for a fool. There were reasons he hadn’t told Jim about this, reasons which had nothing to do with childish things like fear of rejection, and everything to do with a fear of getting what he wanted, at least in some respect. There was little doubt in his mind that Jim would be willing to sleep with him, or would have been if that was all he’d thought it was, but what then? 

“Look, Jim, forget it. It doesn’t matter. Hasn’t mattered for years.” Too late, he realized that was giving still more of himself away.

“Years?” Jim’s voice was quiet, shocked. “Bones…” But he seemed incapable of saying anything else.

“Don’t worry about it.” McCoy shook his head and let go of Jim’s arm. “I don’t expect anything from you. I just… Feel what I feel.” Shrugging, Leonard crossed his arms again. Surprisingly, the motion didn’t dislodge Jim’s hand from his own arm. Jim was still just staring at him with a poleaxed look on his face. “You can let go, you know.” 

The kid blinked, and came out of it. Jim’s hand fell away. “I… this is a lot to process.” Well, at least Jim was forming complete sentences now. Maybe he hadn’t quite broken Captain Kirk all to smithereens. 

“Well no shit, Jim.” If Leonard’s gut was tying itself in knots knowing Jim knew, well, that was his business. He was an adult; he could do this. “I didn’t exactly plan on you finding out anytime soon. There’s too much on your plate.” Anything and everything to downplay what he’d said without denying it. Exposed as it left him, he couldn’t forget how much it had hurt to know Jim died without knowing he was loved. If he took it back now, he didn’t know that he’d ever have the courage to say it again. “I don’t expect anything from you,” he repeated, feeling a bit like a broken record. Without Jim’s response he didn’t know what else to do. It was his apartment, so he couldn’t exactly leave. Similarly, kicking Jim out wasn’t going to happen either. 

It took a few minutes of silence before Jim spoke again. 

“Bones… I… There is a lot on my plate, yeah, but you’re pretty much the one person I’ll always have time for.” The rush of pleasure and pride that sent through him was not to be denied. At least he had that. “I’d ask why you didn’t say something sooner, but I think I can guess.” Jim’s tone was wry. “Love me or not –” Jim’s voice stammered over the L-word a little, “it’s gotta be obvious I’m not the best at relationships, so why bother?” 

This really wasn’t making a whole lot of sense. “Jim? I got nothin’ here. Where are you going with this?” Because Jim was talking like Bones admitting to his feelings did change something, and aside from awkwardness Leonard for the life of him couldn’t see what. 

Jim took a deep breath, folding his arms over his own chest in a mirror of McCoy’s defensive posture. “I’m saying you’re not… the only one who feels like that.” Running a thumb over his lower lip, Jim continued, “I do too. Have. For a while.” 

Leonard blinked. “I… uh… Huh.” For once, his quick tongue was at a total loss. Jim was saying that he _loved him back_. 

Had he fallen down the rabbit hole, here? Things like this just didn’t happen to him. 

“I know why you didn’t say anything, Bones, and you were right not to. I mean, hell, our friendship is already pushing the boundaries of what a stable relationship is to me, so…” Jim forced a laugh, and McCoy couldn’t help himself. He stretched out to wrap his hand around Jim’s bicep again, reestablishing that physical link. He was a doctor, dammit, and touch was an important tool in his arsenal. “I don’t… expect anything either. Jesus, Bones, I don’t know if I _could_ , I mean, with what Joss did to you and me being me… I don’t want to hurt you, Bones.” 

Jim looked like he was going to run on at the mouth for a good long while, so Leonard cut across him quickly. “I’m sorry, can we go back to the part where this is apparently mutual? ‘Cause I think I got a little lost on the scenic tour there, Jim-boy.” His drawl was precise and slow, the same tone he’d always used to substitute for the words ‘bless your heart’ when Jim was being particularly dense about something. Normally it was cases of leaping before looking, but in this case it seemed like Jim was doing enough looking for even McCoy. 

Jim’s words died in his throat, and for a few seconds he looked like a goldfish. Leonard smirked. And waited.

“Bones… I… You can’t be saying you think we should do something about this?” Ah, there he was. 

McCoy’s world might be spinning on a new axis, but it was still dirt under his feet. “Right now? Not a chance in hell.” In love with Jim he might be, suicidal he was not. “Aside from all of this,” he gestured between them with his free hand, “we’ve both got mostly unrelated fresh baggage upon baggage, kid.” Jim nodded slowly, not quite able to hide the mix of hope and faint dejection in his eyes right now.

McCoy didn’t plan to let the latter stay long. “I honestly don’t know if we could make anything work even under ideal circumstances. ‘Cause you’re right, I gotta know you’d be faithful, and you got a libido that won’t quit.” Aw, shit, that wasn’t coming out right. Jim looked like he’d slapped him. “I’m not mad about it! Hell, I’ve known about it longer than I’ve felt what I feel and the feeling’s still there.” Using the word ‘love’ was far harder when he wasn’t spitting mad. Jim looked like he was overwhelmed enough anyway.

Shrugging, Leonard continued, “I don’t want to force monogamy on you.” Good god, they were talking about this. Maybe Jim hadn’t gotten to the warp core in time. Maybe they’d all just died, because this moment was insane enough to be the afterlife, and he would argue with anyone who’d listen that what he’d just been through should count as Hell. 

Bones blew out a breath. “Look, I.. Jim, I’m drunk. And I’m still not over you dying. Don’t know if I’ll ever be, but I’m sure as hell not now. There’s no way I’m in a state to talk about this tonight.” Jim nodded, and Bones took that as encouragement. “Let’s give it some time. At least a month. Probably more like two. And we just go on as we have until then, and then we talk.”

Jim scrubbed a hand through his hair, and finally responded to McCoy’s torrent of words. “Uh, yeah… I don’t even…” The kid huffed a laugh, “I don’t even know, Bones. This is crazy. Am I dreaming?”

“If you are, I am.” Leonard didn’t even know at this point if he hoped they were or weren’t.

“Then I guess I’m not.” Jim hesitated for a beat, before standing up. Leonard rose to his feet as well out of mingled courtesy, concern, and Starfleet training. “I should probably…” he gestured at the door. Bones nodded. Yeah. Even though spending time with Jim was almost always something he enjoyed, with what had just been said, everything was awkward. Jim nodded again, and moved to leave.

The captain paused at the door, looking back over his shoulder. “Lunch in the mess tomorrow?” McCoy hesitated for a second. “Just lunch. Nothing different.” 

With that reassurance, Bones smiled. “Yeah. I’ll see you at lunch,” he agreed. The smile stayed on his face until the door shut behind Jim.

After it sealed, McCoy blew out a breath and sank down into the couch again, blinking unseeingly at the door. 

‘ _Maybe I should buy a lotto ticket..._ ’

* * *

It had been two months of adjustment, not just to what they’d admitted, but to everything that had led to that admission. Starfleet’s uproar, patient logs and his own psych visits had kept McCoy almost too occupied to worry about his personal life. Almost. There’d been a few messages exchanged with Jim outside their usual ‘look at us we’re so platonic’ interactions that indicated what each thought could be potential sticking points in the effort to become more than friends.

There was also the warm thrill that went through him every time he remembered Jim’s admission. While the kid might not have used the words, Bones knew.

Although he’d never have predicted Jim returning his sentiments, for the most part his best friend was not an utterly inscrutable entity. So when one night Jim showed up at his door looking nervous, McCoy had a pretty good idea that tonight was the night they talked about what they’d said, and figured out if they could make any promises. 

It was going to be like pulling teeth. 

“C’mon in, Jim.” Bones stepped back to let him enter, and that was another problem. His eyes tracked on Jim’s lips, throat, and hips as the captain entered the room. It was like knowing how Jim felt had taken off all the careful checks he’d used to be able to continue looking at himself in the mirror without feeling like some kind of pervert. 

From the look on his face, Jim had caught McCoy looking.

And liked it. 

“So I haven’t slept with anyone since I woke up.” The words tripped out of Jim in a rush, and Leonard raised an eyebrow at him. For a particularly skilled negotiator, Jim didn’t look like he was exactly in control of the board here.

“Alright then. Congratulations. Twelve hours?” McCoy’s tone was a little sarcastic, but he couldn’t help it. If Jim was saying what he thought Jim was saying... It made hope rattle his breastbone like a particularly feisty prisoner. 

Jim groaned and shook his head. “Nearly three months.” So Jim did mean what Leonard had thought. “Longer, if you add in the time I was out of commission, but…” Leonard nodded. For their purposes, that was irrelevant. Only the most recent two months really did, but he didn’t begrudge Jim inflating his numbers.

And this whole thing was kind of catching him off guard. He’d been prepared to explain to Jim how this was the one thing he thought that could make furthering their relationship impossible, only to find Jim already knew. And had _done_ something about it. Bones had seen Jim flirt, he still flirted with almost any attractive being that crossed his path. Strange as it might be, though, when Jim said he hadn’t slept with any of them since finding out about McCoy’s feelings for him, McCoy believed it. 

It probably had something to do with how things had just bubbled out of Jim without planning. A faint smile curled Leonard’s lips. If he were being honest with himself, it was a pride thing to think Jim was _that_ excited and hopeful, to give up all finesse. 

After that thought processed, he realized he’d been silent for a good minute and a half and Jim was fidgeting. “S’pose you did this to prove you could be monogamous?” Leonard asked as he stepped closer, that smile still tugging at his lips as he looked at Jim. 

“…Yeah.” Jim admitted with a shrug, but he was smiling back. “I had to prove it to me first.” 

Leonard nodded. “This mean you wanna give a relationship a try?” The questions were abrupt, but with the way hope was rushing higher inside him, he didn’t really care. He had to ask them. That didn’t mean they needed to be too involved.

“Yeah.” Jim agreed. “That okay with you?” Maybe not so much like pulling teeth after all. 

Grinning outright now, Bones stepped all the way in until he was toe-to-toe with Jim. “Darlin’, you got no idea just how okay it is,” he drawled, looping an arm around the back of his best friend’s neck and pulling him in for a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, everyone, that was the ride. Hope you enjoyed my first ever fic above 1000 words! Comments and feedback of all kinds are both enjoyed and encouraged.


End file.
